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Postcards from the Edge: Picture Postcards featuring Insane Asylums

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1475

Following up on yesterday's post on the Architecture of Insanity is this selection of postcards featuring insane asylums. They are all American, and all manufactured ca. 1900-1920, when the thirst for picture postcards depicting local history and structural vignettes was in its heyday. I am uncertain why these images were appealing enough for people to use and send through the mail, but there certainly seems to have been a lot of them--a quick pursuit of them found these in a hurry, and I suspect that there may be hundreds more.

The content certainly would have been interesting to read. And now that I think about it a little, there is material enough to create a version of Wisconsin Death Trip with these images.

New Jersey Hospital for Feeble-Minded Women:

Insane Asylum and Almshouse, Lancaster, Pennsylvania:

Rock County Insane Asylum, Janesville, Wisconsin:

Lunatic Asylum, Phoenix, Arizona:

County Asylum for the Insane, Appleton, Wisconsin:

Insane Asylum, Salem, Oregon

Burlington County Insane Asylum, New Jersey:

Atlantic County Asylum, New Jersey:

Western Kentucky Asylum for the Insane:

Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane (1888):

State Insane Asylum, Austin, Texas:

Deaf Psychiatric Insane Asylum, Jacksonville, Illinois:

Marinette County Insane Asylum:

Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, Worcester, Massachusetts:

Northampton Insane Asylum

Eloise, Michigan, Insane Asylum and Poorhouse:

State Asylum for the Insane, Georgia State Sanitarium, Milledgeville State Hospital: